IRMBAM 2018. 5-7 Jul. FR.

The 9th International Research Meeting in Business and Management (IRMBAM-2018), 5-7 Jul. 2018, IPAG Business School, Nice, France. Conference program in [PDF]

Title of Paper

Which user of technology? Using linguistics to broaden the research framework of acceptance of new technologies in remote services in multinational enterprises.

Abstract

This study bridges research methodology in international business (IB) studies in application to industry workflow practices by using the example of how technology acceptance models (TAMs) can be applied simultaneously in different contexts (intra- and extra- enterprise) when combined with systemic functional linguistics (SFL) as theory and framework of data analysis. The need for a simultaneous application of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model was foregrounded in the context of studying the workflow processes of a remote services business model of a European founded multinational business enterprise (MBE) with regards to (i) intra-firm improvements in managing remote services cases and (ii) extra-firm selling of life cycle management remote services contracts. The Enterprise of study has global operations in over 100 countries, of which this study focuses mostly on its European operations of improving the quality of remote services for the marine industry. The simultaneous understanding of intra- and extra- firm UTAUT processes was necessary for a systems view of the Enterprise remote services business model. But the simultaneous application of the UTAUT model posed a challenge in different contexts in its current form due to the linear staticity of perspective i.e. one UTAUT model for one context, targeted to understand one type of pre-defined User. The purpose of this metalanguage research methods study is to illustrate how the UTAUT linear staticity was circumvented by the application of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) as theory and framework data analysis. This study uses empirical data collected via interviews from the Enterprise of study as case example. The Methods section of the study illustrates how SFL can complement UTAUT as method of research design and framework of analysis.